Stages
by Atomicflea
Summary: Booth goes through the stages of grief and discovers he knows more than he thinks. Booth POV for fated addiction's lovely Under the Rights of Skies. Spoilers for The Hero in the Hold.


**Author:** Atomicflea  
**Title:** Stages  
**Rating:** M  
**Plot:** Booth goes through the stages of grief and discovers he knows more than he thinks. Booth POV inspired by **fated_addiction**'s lovely **Under the Rights of Skies**, written completely on my knees and with utmost deference to She, Master of the Brennan-voice. I highly recommend you read her piece on LJ at .. Spoilers for **The Hero in the Hold.**

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Aside from giving me the squint-chills, it usually didn't bother me when Bones studied me. I use 'studied' because _watched over_ or _looked at_ doesn't quite convey the ritualistic inspection and data archival that accompany the almost audible clicks from her noggin. Tell the truth, the fact that she observes me so closely carries a certain prestige. It's not every Tom, Dick or Sully that can catch and hold the interest of a world-class anthropologist, even if said interest is as asexual as Sweets. She waited outside my ER bay, simultaneously deflecting any interest about our association with her usual Teflon coating and beaming a charming double-barrel full of friendly concern and academic inquiry in my general direction. Her forehead was as smooth and antiseptic as the rest of this place, and I envied her ability to keep herself together even as I resented it. Not only did I feel and look like I'd just come from the Superdome post-Katrina, but it was going to be hell trying to get the deposit back on my tux. Not so the good Doctor. After a sleepless night of things kaboom'ing all over her, she glittered like sunlight off a calm lake. It was beginning to get to me.

Maybe now that I've added ghost whisperer to my job description, I'm starting to consider she may not be real. Maybe it's my recent almost-live-burial snafu. Maybe it's the inevitable reaction to her non-presence, detached, impenetrable and serious as a lead slug. Even her profile is lethal. I flash back to the helicopter, her sharp little chin on my shoulder bleeding the life out of me and I shudder despite the distance from the heat she emanates like a black hole. My already unstable mood crumbles like a stale cracker when I notice my doctor positioning himself facing the glass and sneaking peeks at her Mona Lisa impression on the other side. I'd like to say it's thanks to my superior FBI training, but his thoughts are so obvious I'm surprised they aren't being broadcast over the P.A. system along with all other noteworthy announcements: _Great eyes._ _Killer legs. Code yellow, adult trauma in the ER. Wonder if she's with him._

Define 'with', asshat. Despite the fact that I've never seen so much as a bra strap, she's my emergency contact, de facto primary care physician, erstwhile dinner date and partial beneficiary. I stop short of marking my territory by urinating, but barely. She's 'with' me more than with anyone else, even if it hasn't stopped her from sleeping with my friends. Come to think, it only stops her from sleeping with me.

_What, you've never loved somebody and didn't say it to them?_

My feet are too tired to click my heels, but it I still wish she'd go home.

Even on the best of days this tango of ours is exhausting, and my recent cruise on the S.S. Gravedigger hadn't helped shore up my reserves. Huh. If I didn't shore up the reserves, I'd be a ticking bomb. Ha. I'd be buried. See what I did there? I'm a punny guy. Hell of a drug, Demerol. Didn't take long at all. Right down to business, efficient and habit-forming. Kind of like my girl Tempe. If she came in a convenient blister pack I would have self-medicated years ago, despite the doubtless prohibitive cost and inevitable dependency issues.

Up by the glass near the ER entrance, my Lucy in the Sky's signs all point to impassive. She's so good at playing neutral that the hand resting on the glass should be clutching a royal flush. Its limp wrist and loose fingers tell anyone watching that her interest is purely academic, but I've said before the 'S' is for 'Special', and I know that it's the one that's jammed into the pocket of her overcoat that tells the story. I take note, but for once I'm too wiped to investigate further so I don't talk back when Dr. McDreamy waves her over.

"You can go in now."  
"Thank you"

She's studied the script enough to know that she's supposed to be supportive, but her expression as she folds herself into the chair next to my bed is both confused and expectant. I ignore it and her, as best I can. These are the sorts of tangles I usually unravel for her, but I'm tied into a knot of EKG monitor cables and insecurity and damn it, my head hurts. If I were clear I would tell her the right thing to say just for the relief of hearing it come out of her mouth, in that deep news anchor tone that sounds so sincere I almost forget that I feed her the lines. The reasoning I use to justify this was probably clear once, but it was becoming fuzzier by the minute. No use. I was drugged when this began and I sure as hell plan on being drugged now that it's over, so I can't turn her emotions into flashcards very effectively right now. More than that, I want her to feel it enough that she can't help but say it. I want to know she _can_.

I don't speak, so neither does she.

Close up the tiny wrinkles on her forehead are fault lines above the cliffs of her eyebrows, contracting briefly as she presses her hands into her eye sockets and sighs with exhaustion. I take advantage of her diminished senses to sniff around her like a bloodhound. Back in the helicopter I never got to see if she was hurt, but everything seems to check out fine, smoke and springtime and woman. Her voice, when it finally comes, is an echo of itself that's hard to hear above the staccato pings and beeps of my heart rate.

"How long do you have to stay?"

My breath burns my chest when I try to answer and I realize I haven't the faintest idea. I'm fixated on her hands, so much more telling than her voice, pressing and releasing her eyes in an effort to focus. _Orbital cavity _pops into the thought balloon above my head. I don't always listen, but I hear her more often than she thinks. She seems like she'd benefit from a laugh, so I try to give her what she needs, slipping into my Flip Fibbie routine.

"I wasn't paying attention. My ears are still ringing. Ask him though, Bones. I want to know when I can break out. I've got vacation time to use."

Even before I finish teasing her I see her gears shift and grind in the set of her jawline.

"You should rest."  
"I'm _fine_."  
"...You need to rest."

Whether because of the drugs or the exhaustion, her voice comes at me as if from underground, and the images in my memory assault me. Bones' hand sharp through gravel, her smooth face rippling, breaking, her hair in my mouth when she launched herself into me, her silver eyes opaque with fear, the red welt on her face where my day-old beard scraped her. No time to shave when you're worried about dying. Did I shave when she was gone? I don't remember. I remember she cried today, her expression crumpling in on itself like a beer can. Cold beer, warm bath. No crying then. I died once, and my funeral was a waste of her time. The scar from the bullet I took for her right before I imposed upon her day burns like a lit cigarette and the healthy distance and empathy I've been cultivating wither at its tip. In the tradition of bratty sisters everywhere, I'm supposed to care about her all the time, but I can only tell she cares about me when she's ordering me around or frightened over my health and damn it, _whatever the hell I am, I'm not your brother_. The snap in my jaw when I unlock it to answer her pops like the cocking of a gun.

"I'm _fine_."

"Stop _saying_ that."

Her statement has orange cones and flashing lights all around it, but after hours spent with her running as hot and cold as a motel shower I could care less and welcome our mutual anger with open arms. We glare at each other for a few wonderful seconds of complete like-mindedness until, perverse freak that I am, I get turned on. Brennan angry is unspeakably sexy. Her face sharpens and glows with purpose and her mouth neglects to attend its usual lip-thinning consult upstairs before it unloads. Her emotional nudity invariably leads me into thoughts of actual nudity, and I can fantasize the shallow breaths and lower tone are a reaction to my delts. Half out of my mind with painkillers and displaced rage I'd have to be a eunuch or a saint to avoid jumping her--and I'm no saint, although I play one on TV. Even now despite my certainty she'd K.O. me like Tyson did Spinks, the anger was so motivating I was halfway to her mouth before my super-sniper senses noticed her chin quiver under wide eyes and my libido dropped me cold long before she could. Almost too late I realized the leftover endorphins from our little adventure were trying to bypass my mouth and express themselves through my pants. This wasn't good for us. It wouldn't help, and even if I didn't mean it to, it could hurt. _Underneath your affable exterior is a deep reservoir of rage._ Suddenly off-balance, I reached instinctively for her hand to keep myself level. It was tight and clenched beneath mine. I pitched my voice in the tone I used to read Parker to sleep and willed myself calm.

"Talk to me."

Feminine as she is, she fights any perception of vulnerability. Incapacity. Insight hits me like the beam of a flashlight. She's not angry. She's frightened. For me. The clouds part in her face and she inhales gamely, my brave girl. When she does speak, she stutters, her words bouncing off my remorseful body like shrapnel.

"I -"  
"I'm glad you're okay."

Sober as an altar-boy now, I cling to this part of her statement and ignore the rest. She'll fill in the blanks with the appropriate platitudes that piece together our ritual like a Sunday paper sudoku, but I've pegged my suspect and I'm moving on to making my case. Emotion makes pauses in her naturally measured speech, and if not for them I would never know what she meant, how she felt. Brennan is most eloquent in her silences, and our partnership depends on whether or not I listen, and what I hear. This is how I understand her, and God help me, I don't understand myself anymore unless I understand her first.

She's looking at me like a woman in a clown suit, but I'm back on even ground. Even with a brain like a CPU she's only human and sometimes, words march up your throat and demand to be let out. I know she feels unsure, exposed. I know she thinks she's shown her hand more times than I have, but she doesn't know that despite her atheism my devotion to her is a sacreligious constant. My hand tightens over hers, and I speak aloud the thought that kept me lucid and resentful and alive throughout the long night of what would have been our first date.

"Bet you looked beautiful."

She makes that cute owl face and I wish desperately for glasses, which makes me grin with glee. If anything, she looks more alarmed. Her blink is slow, and when she opens her eyes again there's a look in them I've never seen as she's standing and tugging at the belt of her Carmen Miranda-issue trench coat. I resist the urge to pinch myself. This is a new Brennan to add to my collector's deck, languid and determined and dreamlike. _Sully's seen this_, I think, and the thought heats my face with envy and 100% pure alpha-male possessiveness. I'm not sure what she sees in my expression, but when the coat drops her face turns to the ground, shielding her eyes from me. She's all long legs and tawny hair and dark sparkly dress and I swear I can hear the National Anthem playing. My chest feels like someone took a melon baller to it and filled in the hole with a mosh pit.

"You look good," I whisper. I'm not sure I could elaborate at gunpoint.

She grimaces in that self-conscious way of hers and looks up into my eyes to weigh the truth of my statement. It's a crime what she does to that mouth. The coat flutters closed like a curtain but I don't complain because she is back on my hospital- issue bed, stroking my knuckles and from her this show of affection and the statement that follows it are as expressive as a proposal.

"There's always next year."

Her words snip neatly through the string holding my head upright and I nod without really meaning to as I press my fingers over the hand that was in her pocket, trying to smooth out the half-moon impressions left on her palm. _Temperance_, I think, allowing myself to sink into the intimacy of the moment like a sinner at communion. Temperance. Moderation, restraint. We've gotten so good at it we're like a model in the Angelator--three-dimensional down to the last detail, but transparent and short-lived. Our entire life is a series of waiting rooms where one of us keeps the other out. We take bullets, give up careers, threaten lives--take them--but we're never brave enough. She, who pontificates for days in Squintese on matters great and small, won't say. I, sniper, agent, supersoldier, am too scared. We still haven't spoken the words today, but we both _know_. Assumptions are unreliable, but confessions are as good as facts, and our souls are telling all and begging for absolution through our palms. I squeeze her hand as if I could impress the proof of it upon my skin and open my mouth to speak when I hear the laughter in the hall.

Damn. Visitors.


End file.
